Writing on the wall...which some still can’t read

Islamabad diary
This movement is not to be stopped or wished away. I am not expressing a desire, merely pointing to a reality getting stronger by the day. If it had no staying power this movement would have finished at the end of August, boredom and ennui taking over. Dispiritedness would have set in.
After all, the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) – its workers more charged and organised in the beginning as compared to the workers of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – has abandoned the field, for reasons best known to the Reverend Allama. As winter sets in, and a new dynamic takes hold over the national landscape, only the memory of that struggle remains, in which PAT activists played such a significant role.
There was nothing to prevent the PTI from suffering a similar fate. It too could have succumbed to physical fatigue and weariness of spirit. But it has gone from strength to strength, in the heat of this movement becoming a stronger and more organised party…its workers, activists and sympathisers gaining in confidence and morale.
And they have proved their mettle. Closing down major cities is easier said than done. But they managed to shut down Faisalabad, long considered a PML-N stronghold, a redoubt of the Sharifs. The call to shut down Karachi could so easily have failed and gone wrong. And there would have been egg on Imran Khan’s face and PTI sympathisers would not have known where to hide. But they pulled off that feat too.
Now as I write these lines early in the morning in the comfort of the Gymkhana – having got on a plane from Karachi last evening where I had gone to see the PTI’s shutdown and also to attend the Rumi Festival at the Beach Luxury (with whose old world charm, and faded glory, anyone of spirit will fall in love) – the battle for the soul of Lahore (if this be not a poetic exaggeration) has already begun.
From early TV reports it is clear that PTI activists are spread across the city, blocking major intersections. The metro-bus service has been suspended. And it is still only eight in the morning. It promises to be a long day although this much is clear that the PTI, like it or not, is on the march – the initiative with it – while the PML-N is reduced to verbal grandstanding and histrionics.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the larger picture. Mass politics had died in Pakistan…the era of street agitation, of mass movements, over. Politics had come down to a see-saw battle between two tired and largely discredited political forces – the PML-N and PPP, both devoid of fresh ideas and living on past slogans. Yet the grip of these parties on the political scene was so complete that it left space for no alternatives. This led to a sense of alienation – the young, the educated, the middle classes, young professionals, the unemployed, the disenchanted and disillusioned, losing interest in politics because it had no meaning for them.
In all of Pakistan’s history no one has had a longer apprenticeship than Imran Khan, toiling away for 15 years – 1996-2011 – in the political wilderness, a sporting celebrity becoming wandering political prophet beating a hollow drum, honoured for his other accomplishments but ignored for his politics.
From the founding of the PPP in 1967 Bhutto was prime minister in four years. From being picked up by Gen Jilani as Punjab finance minister in 1981, Nawaz Sharif was Punjab chief minister in 1985, then again chief minister in 1988 and then prime minister in 1990. Thus political stardust both Bhutto and the Sharifs touched early. Imran, by contrast, has travelled a long and lonely road. Only now, after a pilgrimage of almost 18 years, has he found his mark, his words finally falling on ready ears.
For something strange has happened. The ground has shifted from under the feet of the old politics – the PPP dead and buried in Punjab where once it reigned supreme, and the Sharifs, out of step with the times, being seen as representatives of a past whose heyday has long been over.
There is no calumny greater than the smug charge that only the well-heeled are responding to Imran’s call. The movement he has sparked and is leading has drawn all sections of the people – from the well-heeled to the deprived and down-and-out – into its fold, which alone accounts for both its sustaining power and its mass appeal.
Small wonder the PTI has inaugurated a new era in national politics. It has ended the alienation of the politically disengaged, that vast section of the population which found no connection with politics and was consequently on a rudderless sea, its frustration with prevailing conditions finding its only outlet in the national pastime of cynicism.
By galvanising the young, the middle classes, the disenfranchised and the female half of the Pakistani population Imran and the PTI have brought about this change. Commitment, and passionate commitment at that, has taken the place of the earlier nihilism, something which can be seen in the PTI’s jalsas and rallies, DJ Butt’s music not creating but expressing this mood.
All this may come to nothing but that is for the future to decide. Just as Bhutto spoke for his times, Imran is speaking, and articulating the discontent of the present times. And because what he is saying, and how he is saying it, is not airy-fairy stuff but expressive of the feelings of ordinary people – what they feel in their hearts and souls – they are responding to him.
It is no joke closing down Faisalabad and Lahore. You can’t do it by verbal ballistics alone. You need street power for it and the PTI has amply demonstrated, time and again, that where once it lacked this essential ingredient now it has plenty of it. Look at the way Imran just gives a call for a rally or a shutdown and his cadres and activists get to work without need for further motivation or instruction. This is political power, which once Bhutto had in West Pakistan and the Awami League and Sheikh Mujib in East Pakistan. The Sharifs have only the Punjab Police and this is a force which stands demoralised.
How does anyone make the Sharifs understand all this? As agents of Gen Zia’s reactionary rule, they not only swam with the tide but profited the most from it. Their rise to political and financial prominence is rooted in the political necessities of that dispensation. How are they to realise that the tide has turned? The ongoing movement which we are witnessing is just giving expression to long-muted, long-silenced, frustration and despair. But the frustration and despair were there, interwoven into Pakistan’s social and political fabric.
And much of these feelings arose from the politics represented by the Sharifs and the incomparable Zardari, two sides of the same coin. Vast acquisition of wealth by both the Sharifs and the PPP leadership softened by palliatives or lollipops – in the form of laptops and yellow taxis – to keep the masses distracted. The Roman Caesars held games and distributed free bread to keep the populace amused. The Sharifs distribute laptops and construct showy projects to sell themselves politically.
For those who think this state of affairs can last indefinitely there is much to learn. The old order is breaking down. This is increasingly evident although it is our privilege to recognise or ignore this reality.
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com